Nuclear Blues

Performer: Blood, Sweat & Tears
Engineer: Chris Huston
Producer: Jerry Goldstein
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Blood, Sweat & Tears: David Clayton-Thomas (vocals); Robert Piltch (acoustic & electric guitar); Vern Dorge (soprano & alto saxophones, flute); Earl Seymour (tenor & baritone saxophones, flute); Bruce Cassidy (trumpet, flugelhorn); Richard Martinez (keyboards); David Piltch (bass); Bobby Economou (drums). Additional personnel: Luther Rabb, Howard Scott, Lonnie Jordan, William Smith (background vocals). Recorded at Coconuts Recording, Miami, Florida. This 1980 edition of rock's longest-running horn band is definitely not your father's Blood, Sweat & Tears. Frontman David Clayton-Thomas is still on board, but everybody else is new. The musical emphasis has mostly shifted, from pop/soul with a jazz flavor to out-and-out fusion jazz, such as "Agitato," and the lengthy and often quite lovely "Spanish Wine" suite, with only an occasional lead vocal (a radically re-arranged cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Manic Depression"). Big exceptions include the title tune, in which Clayton-Thomas vents his paranoia about Three Mile Island, and an impassioned, if relatively straightforward, cover of the old blues standard "I'll Drown In My Own Tears."

As initially conceived by Al Kooper, Blood, Sweat & Tears was the first and best of the jazz-rock horn bands. Though Kooper departed after the debut album, new singer David Clayton-Thomas led the band to huge commercial success with a more pop-oriented approach. BST--in both its Kooper and Clayton-Thomas incarnations--epitomized post-'60s eclecticism, crafting Top 40 hits out of musical influences as disparate as Billie Holiday, Tim Buckley, and Erik Satie.

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